gum advent calendar

I saw this fun idea on this blog that I just loved and couldn't wait to make them for my family and friends. It's a mini gum advent calendar. We started today, twelve days until Christmas. Jacoby and I go home Friday and I can hardly stand it. I haven't seen Becca's family in six months; I think that is ridiculous! I'm so excited for Christmastime and to spend time with our families and friends. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is talking to Thomas; it's so great to hear his voice. These two were for Tyler and Steph. Tyler's birthday is tomorrow so I put a little present on that day. Also, Steph's birthday is six days before Christmas.
I wrote the days with Sharpies.

pictures and notebooks

My good friend Lisa just got a nice new camera and has been practicing taking pictures. She snapped a few of Jacoby that I thought turned out cute. It's hard to get him to stay still for very long, but I took some bubbles and that entertained him a little. Thanks, Lisa!

When I went home for Thanksgiving, I worked on some projects with my mom and sister. I had seen these notebooks on one of my favorite blogs, eighteen25, and wanted to do one. I didn't know it, but Steph had went and got all the stuff for all of us to make them and even one for her to make and send to Becca. Steph is really good about doing nice things like that. She is a very thoughtful person and always makes good treats for a party or gets stuff to do fun activities and projects. Thanks, Steph. These are really fun and I have used it a lot for all my Christmas planning. It's nice to have it all in one place and it even holds coupons and receipts, two things I always have. They were all a little different, but with coordinating papers.

home for the holidays

If we hadn't gone home for Thanksgiving, it just wouldn't have been the same. We had such a good time and are so grateful for our wonderful families. We love you all!
On our way to Idaho. We already knew that Jacoby wasn't a good traveler, but both plane rides were more stressful than we thought they would be. I brought all kinds of snacks, new toys, movies, and stickers for him, but he just didn't like sitting in one place. Can you believe that a two-year-old wouldn't do that? After the flight, Jacoby was getting a kick out of the luggage popping up onto the track. He was laughing real hard. :)

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Festival of Trees the last night it was open to see my family's trees; they looked awesome. It was sad to not have a tree in it this year, but still great to be able to go. Festival of trees really kicks off the holidays for me.

Jacoby loves his Aunt Annie and learned her name very first out of the family. Loved their matching hats!

Jacoby with Grandma Debie on her birthday

I've missed little Eden so much, it's been four months since I'd seen Steph's family. Way too long. She is growing up so much.

Love my sisters...but where is my Becca? Oh I wish I could've seen her this trip; I can't wait for Christmas!

My boys on Thanksgiving

Jacoby and Eden are always willing to hug and kiss each other.

When we first got to Idaho, we went to lunch with both of our families. When Eden walked in the restaurant, Jacoby saw her and they slowly walked up to each other and hugged for a really long time. It was real sweet.

Priceless. I was so excited to get this picture that I started screaming.

I love my family and miss them everyday.

We had a really great Thanksgiving with both families. We kicked off the day by having lunch with my mom's side of the family. We had tasty food and played some fun games.

Later we went to Tyler's aunt and uncle's for another meal. Yum! It was so nice to see our families.

We left Friday morning, but I decided to wake up real early to do a little Christmas shopping with my family. My mother-in-law even made hot chocolate to go for me and all of my family who was going. She is a thoughtful lady. :)

We had a great time and can't wait to come home for Christmas!

Jacoby was even more of a stinker on the way home. It didn't help that the DVD player died after 45 minutes. He threw a few tantrums and kept laying in the aisle. I kept picking him up and setting him on his seat. Finally, he had his legs out in the aisle and was being good and I had had enough fighting with him. When I noticed the flight attendants looking back at us, they got on the intercom and said, "Keep your children in their seats and off of the floor. The floor is filthy. People are constantly getting on and off the plane and the floor is a very dirty place for them to be." By this point I was so overwhelmed and couldn't believe that they would go off about it. While I understand that it's not safe for kids to be on the ground instead of in their seats, I don't think it was necessary to give ME a lecture over the intercom. I would've appreciated them approaching me and kindly asking me to put my son in his seat.

Here's to hoping our next flight goes well and I hope so since it'll be without Tyler. :(

more apartment pictures

Here are more pictures of our apartment.
This is Jacoby's bathroom or our guest bathroom. It's going to be an owl bathroom. It still has a lot of work to do, but will have a lot of bright colors with brown. My mom and I did the owl specimen art in the shadow boxes when they came to visit. They were lots of fun. We found the cute owl punch at Michael's.

I made the little owls and had them printed as 4x6s and put them in this frame.

My mom made a couple of these for my little sisters' room, but when Olivia moved into another room(took over Thomas'), she said I could have one of them. I was thrilled because I'd been eying it and hinting at wanting it for awhile. I kinda talked about stealing it really. My sisters and I do that all the time about things of our mom's. I Modge Podged different paper over top and added sheets of metal that I had my Uncle Dave cut for me.

Here's Jacoby's room. It's so fun to finally have it done. It was so fun to do. I found some darling fabric that was a line from Riley Blake that I fell in love with and used throughout the entire room on different projects. I used it for the pennant banner, pillow sham, laundry basket liner, and toy basket liners. For the bedspread, I made a duvet cover out of a set of queen sized sheets. They were the perfect size for a twin duvet cover and hardly required any cutting. My mom helped me with so many of these projects! Debie made the awesome bed skirt. She used some heavier white fabric and added a thick strip of green grosgrain ribbon on the bottom.

The J is for Jacoby frame came from an idea I saw on the internet.

It's really fun to have a picture from highschool of Tyler playing baseball in Jacoby's room. I originally gave it to him for Christmas before Jacoby was born, but knew that it would be fun in Jacoby's room. Jacoby always points to it and says, "Daddy. Baseball. Mitt." I framed a scrapbook page of Jacoby's that I will switch out from time to time. The collection of J's was really fun. I started collecting them a long time ago, so it was fun to finally have enough to do what I wanted with them.

I loved the shelves like this that I'd seen in Pottery Barn and happened to find one for ten bucks at Downeast.

This is the papasan chair that my mom recovered. I didn't do much there, I was her assistant as she was sewing it with the chair attached. (Not an easy project)

So nice to finally have this dang bookshelf done. It was quite the project, but I think I'm just slow. We got the bookshelf from Tyler's parents. It was brown, so we sanded and repainted it white, took off the backing and added beadboard, and added crown molding to the top. Devan cut the molding for us and my dad attached it when they came to visit. Thank you guys, we couldn't have done it without ya. The molding just finishes it off. I had my aunt cut vinyl for the buckets and Debie embroidered the liners. I added a strip of fabric to the liners of the baskets.

This is Jacoby snuggling up with his quilt my mom made. Isn't it awesome? As you can see, she also used the same fabric I used throughout his room. She brought it to him when they visited and I was ecstatic. It turned out awesome, Mom!

Here's a better picture of the entire quilt. It's such a fun design. Jacoby loves it, he likes to go get it while he watches movies and says, "Janet, thank you." He doesn't ever say Grandma Janet, just Janet, not very respectful huh? :)

Well, there it is, the rest of our little apartment. It's feeling a little more like home now. Thanks to everyone who helped us with all of our projects; our families are both very talented.

coolest kicks for coby

I know that everyone says that shopping for girls is so much better than boys, but I've found some pretty adorable things for Jacoby, these awesome baseball shoes are at the top of the list. They are perfect for this kid. He wanted them on right when we got home from the store and he was ready to play some ball.

Tyler and I have always agreed about how to dress Jacoby and since I do most of the shopping, it's nice that I know he likes what a pick out. I think he thought I was pretty cool for finding these shoes too...a lot cooler than when I got Jacoby the gingham outfit he's wearing in the picture below. :) The only reason he looks like Kermit the frog is because he's squatting like a frog, it has nothing to do with the green gingham. Ha ha.

Well, I still like it!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year. Jacoby was a little dog and I think he thought it was pretty fun. He was excited about trick-or-treating and all the candy. Now he keeps asking for "candy" and "chocolate". We went to a carnival at Tyler's school on Friday where Jacoby went around to the buildings on campus and did some trick-or-treating and then played on some blow-up toys and had some good snacks. It was fun to spend time with Tyler and we just loved taking Jacoby around to get treats; this year he was at a fun age for Halloween.
On Saturday we went to a trunk-or-treat at the church. I'd never been to one before, but they are great. It was nice to walk around the parking lot to all the cars and he got lots of candy (that I will be helping myself to) and it didn't take very long. It's so weird to be going trick-or-treating in shorts and t-shirts. What the? This is weird, but I like it!
Yesterday we had a little Halloween party with some of our friends. It wa fun to get together and do something on Halloween. We had lots of good treats and had fun playing games. I'm sure grateful to have the new friends I've made down here.
If you know me, you know that I LOVE treats of any kind. I ate way too many over the Halloween weekend and am so SICK of them. Ah! I need something healthy. I hope you all had a fun weekend!

Jacoby with one of his friends, Brooklyn. She looked so darling in her little dress!